Yvonne Mouser is an artist and designer based in Oakland, California. She was born in San Diego and raised in semi-rural Texas where her love of the tactile world first attracted her to sculpture. Functional interest led her to the Furniture Program at California College of the Arts, where she received a BFA with high distinction in 2006.
Yvonne’s work is included in private collections, and has been exhibited nationally and internationally—including at SFMOMA; the Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy; the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia; the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design; the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco; COPIA in Napa, CA; the Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts in Alta Loma, CA; and the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA. Her work has been presented in solo, duo, and group shows at Municipal Bonds in San Francisco, CA.
In 2021, Yvonne was a Wornick Distinguished Visiting Professor of Wood Arts within the Furniture Program of California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has been awarded artist-in-residence at Autodesk's Pier 9 in San Francisco; the Workshop Residence in San Francisco; the Windgate Artist-in-Residence of the Furniture Program in the School of Art + Design at San Diego State University; Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO; and was recipient of the Ron and Anita Wornick Award at California College of the Arts.
Yvonne investigates ideas through the making of objects, experimenting with concepts, materials, and methods with a foundation in the traditions of a woodworking studio. She utilizes craft techniques for joining, shaping, and manipulating material to create furniture, everyday objects, and sculptures. Her work plays with technical processes like coopering, steam bending, laminating, and casting. At times, actions such as grinding and burning, and accumulative assemblies allow for an intuitive approach.
Driven by tactility, Yvonne explores and incorporates a range of materials from metal, glass, sand and paper, to natural fibers and composites. In her practice, craft thinking evolves through hands-on experimentation, where processes often lead to new forms and materials motivate method. Yvonne approaches each new object-making effort as an exercise in restraint, focusing on the purity of an idea and the most direct construction methods in an attempt to achieve simplicity in the final outcome. She is interested in the layering of functionality or structure for transforming familiar objects, yielding adaptations of vernacular forms.
While most works she creates are utilitarian, they function at once as implements for storytelling, and for engaging the environment. Yvonne is fascinated by our perception of natural phenomena and time, which she explores through work that suggests growth, or decay, or a sequence of temporal states or moments, teasing apart time. By combining design details with concept and intentionality in craft, her work aims to reveal the poetry in objects.
Working both independently and with a diverse group of collaborators, Yvonne’s work exists between the practical and conceptual, spanning furniture design, experiences, and fine art. Her own design studio, established in 2009, creates one of a kind objects and small-run production pieces. She co-founded New Factory, a design studio and workshop; Thought for Food, where she focused on the artifacts and experiences of eating; and YMSF, an ongoing collaboration with Tiersa Nureyev of the fashion and textile company Stella Fluorescent.
Yvonne Mouser is represented by Municipal Bonds.